Monday, June 25, 2012

I want to commend to you a recent speech by my long-time friend Blair
Levin, the former head of the FCC's National Broadband Plan task force and now
the head of a project (of which he is the prime mover) called Gig.U. At the time of Gig.U's launch in August
2011, I said in a blog
post: "All in all, it looks like a very worthwhile
venture, one that, if successful, could bring many benefits, not only to the
university communities involved but to the nation at large."

Blair's speech
has a mouthful of a title, "Upgrading
America: Achieving a Strategic Bandwidth Advantage and a Psychology of
Bandwidth Abundance to Drive High-Performance Knowledge Exchange." A big
title – but a speech with a big idea, consistent with the large ambition of the
Gig.U project.

At the outset of the speech, Blair states: "What
I want to do today, however, is to argue that over the next few years, the
prime mission of communications policy ought to be to eliminate bandwidth as a
constraint on innovation and productivity." In the remainder of the address,
he does an admirable job of arguing that bringing "hubs of huge
bandwidth" to places – like university and research communities – where
such "excessive bandwidth" will be utilized in ways that optimize
productivity and creativity for all, is an important goal.

While I may not agree with every aspect of
Blair's address, I do readily commend the vision he articulates and the
seriousness of thought – and the passion – that he brings to the subject.

Blair acknowledges forthrightly that the
purpose of the speech is not to catalog policies, but rather "to sell the
primacy of the mission." That's fair enough.

But, of course, the policies ultimately matter.
Towards the very end of the speech, Blair says: "We can, like Korea,
mandate spending billions to upgrade everywhere to drive more effective use of
the network, or we can upgrade in those places we know we have, and are likely
to do so in the future, create the kinds of improvements that scale everywhere
and create new market forces that incent the private sector to invest in a
broader upgrade."

In my view, reliance on market forces will
provide the incentives for the private sector to get most of the way, if not
all of the way, towards building out the infrastructure that is necessary to
achieve of Blair's big bandwidth vision. Government possibly may have a test-bed-like
role to play, but, if so, that role should be carefully defined and limited.
Reliance on market forces, not government strictures, are much more likely to provide
for the flexibility and responsiveness upon which creativity and innovation
rest.

So, the policy discussion is always relevant,
and it matters. But, for now, it is enough to commend to you Blair's speech
as he goes about trying "to sell the primacy of the mission." It's well worth reading, and thinking about.